A 7-step checklist for project failure

Road sign for sucess or failure

Strategy affects direction, design, and the quality of the end product.

Here are some symptoms to help you identify when a project that is not working well:

  1. No one on the team can clearly communicate the underlying motivation for key decisions
  2. Decisions are being made from the top down but executed from the bottom up
  3. Decisions are neither justified nor validated – they’re reactive and impulsive rather than deliberate and mindful
  4. Innovation is seen as doing something the competition hasn’t done yet
  5. No one has considered how to measure the success of design decisions
  6. The primary on-going goal is to add new functionality (rather than improve what you already have)
  7. Everyone has conflicting ideas of what they should be working on

So pause once in a while to see if you need to address any of these points and you’ll have a much easier time.